ABSTRACT
The anima in film is much like the anima anywhere else: a confusing, deceptive presence with the capacity to engender inner transformation. The Self seeks to achieve the goals of the total psyche by affective stimulation of the ego; it does this through images that are not so much representations of reality as feeling-toned complexes of unconscious life. Not every leading female character in a film is an anima figure, but often there are unmistakable signs that an unconscious, rather than conscious, figure is intended. Film-making, at least in the hands of its acknowledged masters, is a form of active imagination drawing its imagery from the anxieties generated by current concerns, and film watching has become a contemporary ritual that is only apparently a leisure. The film medium allows the director to articulate the limits of anima’s freedom in shaping his creative life.
